[Eddy]

Hi Chris,


By now, I've had a number of photobooth rentals (up to 4/5 hours) and also one permanent booth that run up to 12 hours. From these deployments, I noticed one thing that I couldn't figure out quite yet: once in a while when taking photo, DSLR Remote Pro doesn't generate any greenscreened photo even after the processing screen is over (window title returns to ready.jpg). I am not sure yet what exactly causes this, but there was one time when this happened (DSLR Remote Pro doesn't output any photo), I cleared all the previous photos in the output folder (C:\DSLrRemote\greenscreen) and it worked again.

My 2 setup is as follows:
Operating System : Windows 7 Home Premium
Camera model : Canon EOS 500D and 600D
DSLR Remote Pro version : 2.3.2 (Haven't upgrade to 2.4.1 yet)
Photobooth Settings : 8 profiles with greenscreen and overlay images.

My questions:
1. Does anybody had the same problem before that DSLR Remote Pro doesn't generate any greenscreened photo? Users of DSLR Remote Pro, please chime in if you met with this problem before. Thank you!
2. Is there any limit of number of photos in the output folder set in the Preferences?
3. My photobooth is scripted using AHK and it relied heavily on DSLR Remote Pro window's title to track between the stages: ready, taking and processing. Is there a way to turn live view off when the window's title is "processing". The way I see it is that the live view can be turned off already since we're in processing mode and live view isn't being used anymore at this stage because the DSLR Remote Pro has already transferred the image to computer for processing (chroma key the background with the user's photo and adding foreground). But sending F6 when the window's title is "processing" doesn't seem to work.

Thank you.

[Chris Breeze]

re: 1
There haven't been any reports of problems from other users. Please check that green screen is enabled in all the saved profiles. If one of the profiles doesn't have this enabled the photos won't be green screened when this profile has been selected. Looking at the XML summary file for the photos which aren't green screened should provide some clues as to what's going on.

re: 2
The number of files in a folder is only limited by Windows. A quick search on the net gives a maximum of 65,534 for FAT32 disks and 4,294,967,295 for NTFS disks.

re 3:
You can disable live view display while processing the images by selecting the "Disable live view when printing" option. Using F6 to switch to standby mode is only available when the ready screen is displayed.

[Eddy]

Thanks for the reply, Chris!


re: 1
There haven't been any reports of problems from other users. Please check that green screen is enabled in all the saved profiles. If one of the profiles doesn't have this enabled the photos won't be green screened when this profile has been selected. Looking at the XML summary file for the photos which aren't green screened should provide some clues as to what's going on.
I can be sure that the green screen is enabled and saved in all profiles. I've had the photobooth running everyday and this issue happens only once in a while, say once in a hundred of photo taking. As said previously, when this happens I have to restart the photobooth and clear all images and xml files in both C:\DSLrRemote and C:\DSLrRemote\greenscreen and it will work again. Since this photobooth is all automatic meaning that no one will tend to it unless it's out of paper (I have an utility that sends me a notification when the paper is running low), restarting the booth to make the problem go away once in while seems impractical. But this is the only thing I can do for now.

I will keep observing if I could find the cause of this problem and share with you my finding.


re: 2
The number of files in a folder is only limited by Windows. A quick search on the net gives a maximum of 65,534 for FAT32 disks and 4,294,967,295 for NTFS disks.
Thank you for the info. I had thought the same about this too but since you've confirmed now, I think I know where should I focus to narrow the cause of my (unique) issue. Number of files in folder isn't one of them.


re 3:
You can disable live view display while processing the images by selecting the "Disable live view when printing" option. Using F6 to switch to standby mode is only available when the ready screen is displayed.
Ok, this is new to me. I am actually printing the pictures through Hotfolder Prints at the moment so this option has been left untouched. I will experiment and apply this option in future so that my camera live view can rest as much as possible.

Thank you once again, Chris!

[Chris Breeze]

Are you using DSLR Remote Pro to create the green screened images or another program which is feeding them to Hotfolder Prints? It's possible the problem is caused by the "Delay before processing images" setting in Hotfolder Prints being too short so that it starts to process the images before they are ready.

[Eddy]

Are you using DSLR Remote Pro to create the green screened images or another program which is feeding them to Hotfolder Prints? It's possible the problem is caused by the "Delay before processing images" setting in Hotfolder Prints being too short so that it starts to process the images before they are ready.


Yes, I am using DSLR Remote Pro to create the green screened images and feed them into Hotfolder Prints. As for the option "Delay before processing images", it is set to 0 so they'll print as soon as new images are added but I don't think this has to do with "no greenscreen images generated issue" though because each photo taking session takes about 1 and a half minute (email entry, background selection, actual photo taking, thank you message). These steps are controlled through my script and once the photo taking session is over, my script will loop through the greenscreen folder for new image and if there's any, it will copy that image to another folder named "selected" that Hotfolder Prints monitors. Hotfolder Prints' sole purpose is just printing the image as is.

One more thing: through observation, I noticed that the processing time varies from each background and overlay (I have 8 profiles with different backgrounds and overlays), averaging about 15 seconds. Is there a way to speed this up by throwing more RAMs to the system? [

My current setting is as attached:

http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/2329/dslrremotepro.png

Update: Adjusting the size/quality to lower helps.

A bit more info about my photobooth flow from photo taking to printing (I am skipping the email antry and thank you message screen). When visitors had chosen 2 backgrounds, my script will:
1. Put DSLR Remote out of idle mode.
2. Call up the correct profile based on the background chosen.
3. Send F4 to begin taking photo.
4. Wait 15 seconds so that DSLR Remote Pro has enough time to stream the image from the camera to PC and do the chroma keying and saving it to greenscreen folder. I know that waiting 15 seconds is not ideal, I will improve this over time until I could get the correct processing time before proceeding to the next step.

Thank you.

[Chris Breeze]

Adding more RAM will only help if the PC is low on RAM. If it has 2GB or 4GB of RAM already adding more probably won't make any difference. Reducing the size of the images taken by the camera and the size of the background and overlay images will reduce the time it takes to process the images. The only other way to improve performance is to use a faster processor.

If DSLR Remote Pro is creating the green screened images (using the "Save copy of greenscreened photos in photo booth mode" option) you shouldn't need a delay in Hotfolder prints.

[Eddy]

Thanks for the performance and no-delay tips, Chris!

[Eddy]

Okay, now I am back with the same problem but with a new observation. In my booth, there are a couple of times that the processing time take too long until my script have to reset the photobooth process and start from beginning. My photobooth's average processing time from when F4 is sent to DSLR Remote Pro to it's window title changed to taking.jpg then processing.jpg and becomes ready.jpg is ~13 seconds but there are times that it takes much more longer than average at around > 25 seconds until the WinWait that I put in the script resets the process again. This longer than usual processing problem rarely happens but once every couple days as I observed.

Here's the part of my script that check whether the window's title changes from processing.jpg is over to ready.jpg


; Note: Photobooth_Background_1 is the variable that contains first profile name
WinWait, Breeze Systems Photobooth - C:\MBS\profile\Default\%Photobooth_Background_1%\r eady.jpg, , 25
If(ErrorLevel != 0){
; Show up error message and reset etc
}else{
; Continue with the newly created photo
}

So I am thinking what would possibly be the cause that processing is taking much more longer than usual, longer than twice the average time?

[Chris Breeze]

The only thing I can think of is maybe the computer is busy doing something else e.g. running an antivirus scan.